Personal Assistance
by forbloodysummer
Summary: Sam Cassidy's interview with Malcolm Tucker. A completely platonic first meeting, interrupted by a standard-issue DoSAC crisis. My first story in the world of The Thick Of It. Some delightfully strong language in parts, much like in the actual show. I've rated it as T, would you say that's correct? Or should it be made M? Probably standalone.


Occasionally she wondered how differently her life might have turned out if DSA hadn't chosen that particular moment to fuck up. She'd arrived early for her interview and been shown to a chair outside Malcolm's office, where she sat nervously, trying to surreptitiously dry her palms on her skirt so that when she shook the hand of her potential new employer, he wouldn't have to in turn dry his own.

"Fuck! Fucking AIDS-ridden bollock merchants!"

The shout, coming from inside the office, split the air like a Scottish thunderclap, and Sam nearly jumped out of her seat in surprise. A couple of seconds later, the door had opened and Malcolm had hurriedly appeared, moving with such momentum that Sam could never afterward be sure if he'd been hurrying to introduce himself and then get her out of the way so he could deal with the crisis, or had forgotten that she was there entirely and only stopped short when he saw her. He had obviously been furious (a description she'd retrospectively downgraded to merely cross, once she knew him better and had seen his genuine fury), but made an effort to straighten the snarl off his face and smile while offering his hand.

"Sam, I presume? I'm Malcolm."

She'd leapt to her feet, shaking his hand emphatically and smiling in a way that probably looked more nervous/scared than she would have liked. He hadn't seemed to notice the sweaty palms, or at least gave no sign he did. He'd looked apologetic, but also rushed.

"Listen, I'm afraid something's just come up. I've just had a call from the Department for Social Affairs, which means… you'll learn pretty soon what it means. I think it's mentioned in Revelations somewhere."

"Of course," she'd stammered out, nodding rapidly and trying to look understanding while still nervously smiling. She hadn't quite been sure if she should laugh at his sarcasm, when he himself looked so unamused, or if that would clearly be interpreted as just a sycophantic thing that someone might do in an interview. It wasn't like it had actually been laugh-out-loud funny. Luckily her smiling had provided an awkward compromise.

"Can we reschedule?"

Before she could have responded, he had glanced at the door, at the clock on the wall, and back into his office, perhaps at the phone on his desk, and then started speaking again, his sentences becoming more rushed.

"Actually, can you do me a massive favour? I really need to get a new PA very urgently, or everything is going to start falling down around me, so if you don't mind, can we do the interview now, on the move?"

It wasn't like she'd been in a position to do anything other than happily agree. She had nodded again and grabbed her bag from the floor, by which time Malcolm was nearly out of the door, so she had to do a ridiculous half-run to catch him up and fall into step beside him and slightly behind (she later learned that her own silly run had nothing on Malcolm's).

"This is the problem with interviewing during the day," he'd told her. "Ideally I'd do it after hours, when the MPs have gone to bed and can't break anything else until morning, but I'm not allowed."

He had made a rueful face at that, looking back at her as he held a door open.

"D'you mind working late sometimes?" he'd asked, and laughed mirthlessly when she'd shaken her head.

"'Course you mind. Everyone in their right fucking minds would mind. And having to stay late to clear up other peoples' mess, brought on by their own syphilis-brained incompetence, is one of the many, many reasons that those people need shouting at."

Looking back on events since then, she realised that she never had minded much staying late. She might not have liked it in another job, and she had certainly resented the guilty MPs or departments for it, but if her work wasn't done by the time she was contractually due to leave, then Malcolm might be without the vital piece of information to do his work, and if his work couldn't be done, there was every chance the government would fall. So she had stayed late whenever she needed to, which had sometimes turned out to be more often than not.

They never got much further with her interview. By the time Malcolm had explained the back story to that particular DSA disaster, as well as the department's supposed purpose, they had arrived, and he'd apologised and asked her to wait in the corridor outside the room while he'd gone in and hurled abuse at the occupants for around ten minutes. She'd heard every word, of course, and every time she'd thought her eyebrows could climb no higher, they'd found a loftier place. At first she had tried not to actively imagine the vivid mental pictures Malcolm was describing, but this had failed, given that there had been nothing else there in the corridor to distract her. It would have been fair to say that she'd never heard anyone swear quite like that before. There had almost been a poetic quality to some of it, and she soon found herself smiling. It was when the first of the departmental members was ejected, shortly followed by others, sent running on various errands to fix the situation, that her smile had dropped quickly away as she thought what it must be like to be on the receiving end of such a tirade.

To this day she'd never had one anything like that bad directed her way. She wasn't some hyper-competent sidekick, despite what some others thought, and on the occasions when she fucked up, it ruined things for Malcolm just as much as when a department did. In those (thankfully rare) situations, though, he usually just told her to fuck off and ignored her for a bit, during which time she would frantically correct whatever the blunder had been and repair any damage. Then he'd emerge from his office and favour her with his usual kindly smile, acting like nothing had happened. The first time he'd even apologised and asked if she were ok. It wasn't just his usual niceness to the lower-level employees, she thought; it was that ministers were able to call him out on his own failings, but as his PA she never could. That situation set up a distinctly unfair relationship, with her expected to be perfect, while his own flaws were off-limits, and his kindness towards her (at least compared with towards everyone else) was his best effort to offset the imbalance.

She also had a devastating secret weapon for those situations, or for whenever Malcolm was particularly enraged or waspish or got even less sleep than usual. She knew that her job as Personal Assistant was to Personally Assist in whatever way necessary (within thinly-stretched reason), and while that often meant making calls, arranging appointments, setting up meetings and other office-based duties, she also knew that he was quite capable of doing all those things himself, at least for short spans, because of several holidays over the years that he had insisted she take (regardless of how much she'd said she didn't need them). Even though she'd had her mobile on her at all times in case something went seriously wrong while she was away, and she had repeatedly emphasised that it was no problem to call her back if there were a crisis, Malcolm had never phoned, and had dealt with everything himself.

With Malcolm, she knew her Assistance was often most valuable at the Personal end, as there wasn't anyone else. And while an efficient filing system was no doubt useful to their operation as a team, it was sometimes much more essential that he be calmed down after a particularly bad morning before he his one o'clock with the PM. It was in those situations that her special ability came in most useful; she could make a fucking great cup of tea. She tried to keep an eye on if he was eating enough, but he wasn't like Julius Nicholson; ensuring Malcolm took in enough calories was usually more difficult than making sure there were enough packets of biscuits in the pantry. The well-deployed cup of tea, though, could work wonders with both mood and alertness, not to mention helping forgive any of her mistakes, and letting him know she was there for him.

Eventually the doors had swung open again, and Malcolm had stridden out of the now-deserted Department of Social Affairs. He had looked visibly calmer than when he had gone in, and his heavy breathing had appeared more euphoric than stressed. Sam hadn't quite been sure what expression she was supposed to be wearing, if she should have been smiling because of his apparent triumph, worried because the situation had occurred in the first place, or blissfully ignorant of anything that had gone on behind those closed doors.

He had smiled as he walked over, a sign that his work there was done. His pace had been much slower than on their arrival, and she had fallen into step beside him.

"So, you're still here?" he had begun, cordially, and his accent had added a friendly air, where before it had only served to make him sound more menacing.

"Still here," she'd confirmed and smiled wryly, figuring she'd better do more than nod and appear nervous as she had on the way in.

"Did you happen to hear… any of what transpired while I was gone?"

She had hesitated, pursing her lips. Was this something she was supposed to turn a blind eye to? Just to pretend it didn't happen, and that aggression and intimidation definitely wasn't how a government was run? She explicitly remembered that after formulating such a thought, she'd realised that her delay in responding had given her away.

"Yeah…" she had admitted quietly, and then caught herself again, remembering what her mum had repeated about projecting confidence, clarifying, "Yes, I heard everything."

Malcolm had nodded slightly, as if to himself, walking beside her. He hadn't looked embarrassed, but neither had he looked proud.

"Good," he had said after a few seconds, "probably best to avoid illusions about what goes on here. That," he'd gestured over his shoulder, "is a fair picture of what happens every day. Sometimes it's worse, rarely better."

She had taken that in with a slow nod, her head turning to alternate between looking at him and at where she was walking.

"You should also know," he added, "that I have a pretty fucking nasty reputation, if you hadn't picked up on that already."

That had sounded ominous (and just a tad egocentric), and could have been taken in a number of ways, but he had continued after what had looked like a brief internal debate, now sounding exasperated.

"People fuck up, I get angry. I frighten them, belittle them and threaten their children until they fix things, and I'm content again. Shouting at them is very stress relieving, and the fact that they caused the stress in the first place makes it doubly effective. It seems reasonable to me, but my point is this: If you work for _me_, people will treat you differently to how they would if you worked anyone else. You deserve to be told that from the start."

She remembered how at the time, even after knowing him for a meagre handful of minutes, it had seemed preferable to be smiled upon by him and frowned at by everyone else than the other way around. Maybe that had been loyalty to someone who had seemed, at least to her, to be both a decent person and good at his job, and was (in the understatement of the fucking century) misunderstood by many. Perhaps it had been a mostly-subconscious thing of knowing where the power lay, that she would be better off being closer to the person doing the firing than to the people being fired. Or possibly it had simply been the thought of being on Malcolm's bad side and therefore in the same basket as DSA that had been less than appealing.

She had reasoned that while Malcolm's declaration was almost certainly accurate with regard to ministers, hopefully the other PAs and secretaries would still treat her the same. In point of fact, that had turned out not to be true; the other staff at her level had tended to be all the more fond of her because she worked for Malcolm, because he was generally nicer to them (and more competent) than their own ministers.

They had reached the front door of the building and stepped outside, with Malcolm holding the door for her again. She had wondered how much of that was chivalry, and how much was avoiding the bad PR of the press getting wind of the absence of chivalry, in the same vein as politicians never failing to wear poppies in November. She had suspected that both came into it, but that the decent human being thing was top of the list. Given everything she learned over the years that followed, she thought she'd got that right.

"If I might suggest," he had said as he turned to her on the doorstep, "don't decide either way right now. Go home, think about it, sleep on it, and if you turn up tomorrow morning, the job's yours."

* * *

Malcolm hoped he'd done the right thing with the new PA. She seemed like a good choice, but he hadn't even asked if she could fucking type, let alone about her experience. It was against protocol and would result in some pissing paperwork that might have to become missing paperwork. And it had the potential to come back and bite him in the arse harder than a piranha in a hot sauce Jacuzzi, especially if he had to get shot of her and the news-parasite hacks found out. 'Communcations Director Fails To Directly Communicate' or something equally stupid and more half-bloody-witty. Sod it, he could always just transfer her out to Agriculture, Fuckups and Food if it came to it. And do all he could to ensure the PM never found out, never mind the fucking press.

Back in his office, he shut the door and sank into his desk chair. Jesus, it was hard work trying not to swear around interviewees, harder than a priest with his favourite altar boy. Once they'd taken the job, he'd figured, they'd accepted the language that swirled around it like a hurricane of piss. Hurricane of piss… Hmmm, he should use that one someday. He closed his eyes for a moment and leaned his head back. He hadn't had a spare fucking moment to grab a coffee, and with no PA to send out for one, he had a twatfaced headache from lack of caffeine, on top of his usual, plain, cunting one from lack of sleep.

The protocols, prostates and paperwork for new PAs didn't really cover environments such as the one his would be working in. There was no denying that a certain component of his job involved carrying out verbal assaults on ministers and their accomplices. The most experienced PA in the world would be less use than a nun's cunt if she fell to pieces every time he raised his voice. So battlefield training seemed like the best option. But he hadn't actually tried it before, seeing as Charlotte had been his previous PA since the party were in Opposition and therefore not under quite so much bollock-aching scrutiny.

And this girl, Sam, had passed, as far as he could tell. She'd been nervous, but that was to be expected when going for an interview at 10 fucking Downing Street. But she hadn't been any more nervous after the DSA bollocking than before. If anything she seemed a bit more relaxed. That was a good sign. He would take his fucking chances with her. Now, what were the odds that no cunt would fuck something up in the next half hour, so he could stay right where he was and possibly even just maybe get some fucking sleep?


End file.
